1034959229 Anesthetic Shots
by this.pen.is.red
Summary: AU set in the future, where certain human beings are genetically engineered for the sake of being a romantic partner of another. Love is prohibited beyond the relationship between customer and Product. Enter Product 1034959229- emotionless and obedient, who is no exception to the rule. But then comes love. And then things get messy.
1. Prologue

** 1034959229 Anesthetic Shots**

_AU set in the future, where certain human beings are genetically engineered for the sake of being a romantic partner of another. Love is prohibited beyond the relationship between customer and Product. Enter Product 1034959229- emotionless and obedient, who is no exception to the rule. But then comes love. And then things get messy._

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**Disclaimer: **Gakuen Alice is never gonna be mine, and if there's any kind of similarity here, I disclaim it! I get inspired by a plethora of things, and I apologize if I forget to credit it. :P

**Author's Note:** So yah. A multi-chaptered fic revolving around my favorite character, Hotaru. Because doing a multi-chaptered fic about Mikan would probably make me want to tear my hair out. Beware of OOCness in this story, because it's AU and it's Hotaru. It's hard, okay?!

Sooo. Hopefully this is unlike anything you've ever read before. :D Because it's weird and set in the future and revolves around Hotaru rather than Mikan and stuff. And yerp, she's gonna have her name later on in the story, but it'll be given to her by someone special~ ;) Also: This **may or may not** be a HotaRuka story. I'm still kind of halfsies on that one, because I really don't like stories that revolve around romance, but GAWD HotaRuka must happen. But then there's still this side of me that's fighting for a multi-chaptered sci-fi NatsuHotaru, because _hello_, NO ONE has done that before.

This is the (sort of) prologue/introduction chapter, just for me to test the waters for this fic. I haven't planned it out at all, and I'm pretty sure I'll be terrible at updating, but hey, it's summer! :P I have no excuse now, I suppose.

Please be nice because I'm sensitive (even though I know that my writing is meh). I probably made a couple of mistakes, but I haven't gotten the time to fully proofread it, so please bear with me!

AND AND AND. Thank you for reading. Your readership makes me smile and give you a virtual hug. :3

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I was created with the name Product 1034959229, in a sequestered laboratory off the coast of New Tokyo. For the purposes of explanation, I will provide you with a brief overview of what that means, and what my obligations are.

Where exactly I was created, I am not quite certain, for I myself do not recall the earlier stages of my growth process. All I know is that I was created solely for the purposes of filling the emptiness that humankind feels towards one another. My purple eyes were tailored to the desired shade of purple that was considered arousing for my future customers, and my hair was constantly kept in the chosen length to be desirable to other human beings. All throughout my life I have been fed ways to please—how to speak courteously and yet suggestively, how to be both innocent and tainted simultaneously.

That is not to say, however, that I am anything like a prostitute. The key difference between such an individual and a Product like myself is that we are created solely for companionship—whether that is for one night, or for a lifetime. Prostitutes, however, have the liberty of choice. She may become anything she wants to be if she so desires to leave that line of work. She may love.

I, on the other hand, cannot love; I simply satisfy my requirements. It is not written in my contract to have any such sentiments toward individuals who are not my customers. Ever since I received my contract on my thirteenth birthday, it had been clear to me what my sole purpose was.

_Correction_—I suppose I never truly had a birthday, since I had never truly been born. And I suppose that notion did permeate my mind on certain occasions, but as a Product it was in my contract not to question my position in society. A rule that I had followed—closely, I might add—until the twentieth year after my production date.

Perhaps the reason for that is because at that point in my lifespan I had hit the end. There was something within me that had built up over my years of service under this system, and it had reached its zenith. Or, perhaps, there was a side of me that wanted to be _human_, not simply a Product—no matter what my contract said or what repercussions such a revolutionary thought would have had. I wanted to _feel_ the sentiments that I was supposed to.

_I wanted to love_.

And perhaps I prayed for that wish so hard, that it had actually come true.

Because on my twentieth year, I met Ruka Nogi. And on that very same year, I fell in love.


	2. 1: Customer and Product

**Author's Note**: Heya. First off, thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited or followed this story! Your support means a lot. :D

So I'm just going to go out and say it: I will NOT be revealing who Hotaru is going to be with in this story. That is in part because I haven't decided yet. :P Therefore, updates will also be slow. Anyways... My writing skills are bleh and my brain is mush, so I hope you forgive me if this isn't up to par with your expectations of me. That said, for the small lot of you who are reading this story, I would love to see a review of sorts to know what you felt about it and how you would like it to go. :)

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**1.**

_"I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife."_  
- _Woman at Point Zero_, Nawal El Saadawi

* * *

_An advertisement flashed on the screen. _

_"Are you alone, waiting for that special somebody because she just ain't coming? Well, we've got a solution for you! You see that girl? She's got great taste, she's pleasurable, and she's everything a man wants in a woman! Give her a name, and she'll give you love! We've got 1 million women of all ages and forms ready to serve, and one is bound to fit that hole in your heart. Well, what are you waiting for? Buy a new Product now!" _

X

Product #: 103495229  
Version: 5.3 (Updated May 13 2036)  
Eye color: Dark Byzantium  
Hair color: Black  
Height: 1.56 m  
Weight: 48 kg  
IQ: 140

Notes: Shows signs of unresponsiveness, devoid of emotion - glitch treated with indoctrination, March 15 2037  
Obedience = guaranteed

_Manufactured by Alice & Co._

X

She opened her eyes to tasteless white walls and a kind of monotony with which she was all too familiar.

"1034959229, it is time for your first meal," a robotic alarm sounded. "Five thirty-six; 1034959229, it is time for your first meal."

She looked to her right for her white slippers, a matching ornament to her spotless, pallid dress. It was another ordinary day. She headed to the common dining area.

Her food- the nutrition bar- was a result of her not heeding to company rules of sodium intake. Last week she ingested 1612mg of salt, 112 over the limit for Products, and earned herself a meeting with her Supervisor. "What good would you be," the Supervisor had said, "if you had died before you met your customer?"

It was true. She knew that. So, she swallowed the nutrition bar painfully, feeling the acceptance of her societal role travel down her esophagus.

In spite of her years in the institution, she ate alone. While so many Products built connections with others, she could not see the point in forging bonds when such bonds could never be sustained in the long run. It would hurt much more, after all, to break a bond that was so closely linked. Yet, there was still a part of her that envied the rather frivolous conversations undertaken so close to her.

"Did you hear?" One would wave her hands in excitement, "403050 was sold! She appealed, and she was sold."

Others would join her in vicarious elation. "Oh my gosh! Congrats to her." "Yeah, that's so awesome!"

"That's not all," the first would continue. "She got a _proposal_ from her customer. That means her contract is nearly over!"

"Lucky," a Product nearby would mutter quietly.

Such were the daily conversations she overheard as she secluded herself from her fellow Products.

_Were the lives of the customers similar to theirs?_ She often wondered what it would like to live on the other side- in the world where there were more hopes than sorrows, and more to life than simply complying to the demands of other people. If she had the chance to feel the air they breathed outside, the rawest form of love and hope- she could die happily. She wanted a connection, the prospect of love. But she couldn't, and she knew it; she had a tag on her left wrist that would forever brand her as a commodity, a brain indoctrinated by the ideals of the institution. She was a sick Product, no doubt, of society. She would never survive out there, and she would never get the chance to.

_Until today._

"1034959229. Product 1034959229." A voice on the loudspeaker silenced all Products in the dining hall. "Product 1034959229, proceed to Gate 32."

_Gate 32._ That was the customer's gate. Had she been chosen? The notion left her baffled. _Why her? Why now?_ She cleared her table impeccably and meticulously, and followed the orders of the booming voice of the loudspeaker.

X

When she entered Gate 32, the first thing she saw was a man.

He was the first man she had ever laid her eyes on, but for some strange reason, his existence felt natural- as if she had been anticipating this one moment, seeing it in her dreams playing out exactly the way it did. He was not the handsomest of men she could have fathomed, but his entire presence was one reeking of the prospect of a brighter future that clutched the darkest parts of her heart and shook her awake. She nearly smiled.

He championed the largest smile when his eyes met hers. "That's her!" He yelped in elation, waving his arms back and forth, "That's her!"

The workers around him giggled, abashed for his sake, and reminded him to stay calm. Without the slightest of shame, he composed himself, cleared his throat, and introduced himself properly.

"Hello," he greeted her warmly, "my name is Hayate Matsudaira."

"The pleasure is mine," she returned politely. He seemed taken aback by her formality, and laughed in response. She cocked her head, not quite understanding what was funny. Nonetheless, she continued, "Are you my customer?"

"Product!" The sharp voice of the worker penetrated her question in anger. "You must show respect to your customer. Don't you mean to say, 'Do you happen to be my customer, _sir_?'"

She lowered her head in compliance, to which Hayate seemed conflicted.

"Oh," he chuckled nervously, "about that. I'm not your customer. Actually, I bought you for a friend."

Silence filled the corners of the room, and he, realizing that no one would respond, elaborated: "You see, I have a friend. His name is Ruka Nogi- but I guess that isn't that important. Anyway, what _is_ important is the fact that he doesn't really know anything about women, and he's a really lonely guy, so I thought, y'know. Why not get a girl for him?"

"That is very sweet of you," one of the workers started, her eyes blinking in admiration. She furthered her adulation, "I'm sure he's glad to have a friend like you."

Hayate glanced over at Product 1034959229, seemingly wanting her approval. Seeing this, she felt the obligation to force out a reply:

"I see. I will do my best to satisfy Mr. Nogi."

With that, she followed Hayate Matsudaira out the institution in which she was raised- somnambulantly, as if floating on a cloud.

X

When Ruka Nogi heard about the purchase, he was on a taxi on the way to the hospital to visit his sleep specialist Subaru Imai. He had been experiencing a chronic case of insomnia; he would spend hours and hours on end staring at his own ceiling, his mind blank and tired, but his body unwilling to submit to the notion of rest. As a result, he had an average of four hours of sleep per night (on the good days) and he was cranky, angry and overall unpleasant. The night before he received the phone call, he had shut his eyes for the maximum of three minutes at a time. It was, therefore, not a good idea to be the bringer of bad news to Ruka Nogi on the following day.

Hayate, however, knew nothing about this. And so as soon as he had the Product by his side, he rang up Ruka Nogi to break what he considered the 'good' news. Ruka, on the other end, was already irked simply by the sound of his own ringtone.

"What?"

"Ruka! Hey, I've got a present for you. Are you at the doctor's now?"

"No," Ruka sighed, checking his watch. He had five minutes until the appointment. He turned his attention to the taxi driver, and complained, "Can this move any faster?"

"Sorry, no can do. Can't control traffic, I'm afraid," the taxi driver mumbled in response, flicking the head of his bobblehead doll. Ruka sighed deeply, falling back into his seat.

"Sorry? What do you mean, 'move faster'?" A muffled voice on a cellphone called out, reminding Ruka of his earlier phone conversation.

"No, not you," Ruka said. "I was talking to the taxi driver. Anyways, why are you calling, again?"

There was a silence in which Ruka felt an eerie feeling overcome him. He knew Hayate had done something idiotic again; he felt it in his gut.

"I bought you a Product." Hayate sounded like he had a smile on his face.

"What? A what?"

"A _Product_. She's young, smart and _really_ cute."

"_What_?" Ruka sat up straighter, eyes widening in shock. "You bought me a _woman_?"

"Yeah... Well..." Hayate seemed shocked to hear Ruka's reaction, which in turn shocked Ruka. "Yeah, basically. I did."

He was at a loss for words_. _Had she already been bought? Is there no way to return her? Did she want to be returned? What the _hell_ was he supposed to do? He was suddenly overcome with an unparalleled anger towards the capricious decision-making of Hayate.

"_What the hell is wrong with you?_ What made you think I wanted a woman? What the hell am I supposed to do with her?"

"Geez, chill," Hayate responded on the other side, "I'm on my way to the hospital now."

"What the- No. Don't go to _my_ hospital. Go straight back to where you got her, and return her. I don't need her. Just... Could you stop being an _idiot_ for one second?"

"Too late. I'm already here."

The phone cut off, and Ruka never wanted to hurt someone as badly as he did Hayate at that moment.

X

"I don't need her! Hayate, just mind your own fucking business."

That was the first thing Product 1034959229 heard from Ruka Nogi.

The quarrel between the two continued on as she watched, feeling increasingly unwanted through every passing second.

"Yeah, but... Look at her. Isn't she pretty?"

"Well, yes, but that doesn't mean anything! Couldn't you have at least _consulted_ me before doing random shit that involves _my_ life?"

"She's the one, Ruka! You're always so damn lonely, so I just got her for you."

The blonde man was about to say something, but his name was called by a lady dressed in white. He groaned, stomping away like a six year-old into a room with a sign: _Subaru Imai_. Imai- she liked that name. It was short, and easy to remember.

"Hey," Hayate approached her, breaking her train of thought. "Sorry about that. He's usually a really nice guy, but as you can see, he can get really cranky."

She nodded. This was not the way that people had said the first customer would be. Where was the love, the smiles, the romanticism? She felt nothing. Her naivety, the perfect image of life outside of institution, was crushed by the very person meant to fulfill it.

"Hey, mommy, look." A little girl barely in her first decade pointed at Product 1034959229's wrist, whispering as if keeping a secret. "It's a Product."

"Honey, we don't look at things like that," the mother said, dragging her child away from the scene, but not before glaring furiously at 1034959229. Like an abomination.

She accepted how other people would view her, and she constantly thought about it- what she actually was, and represented. Something lower than a prostitute. A piece of equipment manufactured by some big agency in order to extract profits from those with a loneliness so strong that it has the ability to permeate wallets. Lifetime imprisonment.

Hayate, having noticed her dark aura, lightened the mood. "Hey, why don't we give you a name?"

To this, she quickly responded, "It is in my contract only to be named by my customer."

"Well, pretend I'm Ruka." He smiled, and she reluctantly nodded. She saw no harm in it; after all, it did not seem that Ruka Nogi would even give her a name, to begin with.

"So you're quiet, small, and pretty," he pondered. "What's quiet, small and pretty?" She assumed the question was rhetorical.

"Oh, I know!" His face lit up, as if hit by the eureka effect. "A firefly! Hotaru, your name is Hotaru!"

_Hotaru_. It sounded perfect to her, and her heart filled with a kind of warmth that she did not know she had. Could she possibly join _their _side- that side of the world that she could only touch in her dreams? It was as if the ethereal world had exited her imagination, and shifted a fragment of a millimeter closer to the world with which she was familiar. She accepted the name, nodding in approval, finding herself lost in all of the different combinations- the hopes, the dreams- to make a human name.

Hotaru... _Imai_. That resonated with her, and in the flash of a second, she forgot her Product number. In a second, she was Hotaru. Hotaru Imai.

The chains of her lifetime imprisonment nearly broke.

"I like it," she said, to which Hayate smiled.

X

After fifteen minutes, Ruka Nogi came out of the hospital room, and was surprised to see the Product sitting on the couch, waiting for him.

"Hello," he called, and she stared deeply into his blue eyes.

"Hello," she responded quickly. "Hayate Matsudaira had a few errands to run, and he requested that I stayed here to wait for you."

Oh. Hayate left; _the jerk_. With him gone, Ruka was able to get a closer look at the Product. She was small- true- but her two purple eyes resonated with something deep inside of him that rendered her presence larger than many of the women he had met before. She truly was beautiful.

But wasn't she manufactured as such? Everything about her was calculated, and it made him sick. She was representative of everything wrong in his generation- the expectations of beauty that stole the lives of so many young girls. She- although as an individual knew no vices- was one of so many conjured by a depraved, consumerist society.

"Let's go," he said coldly. He was surprised to find that she complied, trailing behind him like a suitcase would a traveler. Quickly while walking, he dialed a number on his cellphone, and counted the number of rings until the recipient took the call.

"Yup, what's up?"

"Natsume, I have a problem." Natsume Hyuuga was his childhood best friend, and Ruka saw no better person to understand the situation than him.

"Ruka? Yeah, what is it?" Natsume seemed surprised to hear the desperate tone of Ruka's voice. "Did you get some chick knocked up?"

Typical Natsume behavior. "No... But Hayate did something stupid again."

"Ugh," Natsume laughed on the other end, "What did he do this time?"

Ruka glanced at the Product; she was looking to the ground, her face filled with pain that he could never understand. She was a Product; surely she had no emotions?

"Um. He bought me a Product," he whispered into the phone, afraid that other people may hear.

"_What?!_ Fuck, so you're a pimp now?"

"_No_, Natsume. Remember, Products are for romance; prostitutes are for sex. Ugh, anyways, I have to return her."

Before he could discuss with his best friend about this issue, suddenly the Product reacted swiftly and desperately, approaching Ruka with a fear in her eyes. "Please, sir," she pleaded, "do not return me. I will do anything so long as I do not get returned. It is the most shameful thing that can happen to a Product. I would rather die; please, sir."

Ruka, silenced by the overwhelming nature of her response, was by some means struck with a pang of guilt mixed with pity. He could not possibly let her die. At least, not on his watch.

_Not on _his_ watch_.

"...Ruka? You still there?"

"...I have an idea."

"Yeah, so, what is it?"

"I'll just find a new customer for her."

And it was in that moment that everything changed.

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**Author's Note**: So... What do you think? I know, I kind of rushed it. But don't worry! I _will_ go back to proofread and edit and stuff, so :) Please bear with me.

If you've got any comments, feel free to let me know!

X

_ja9lim: Since you have disabled your PM-ing system, I thought I would respond to you here. :D Hehehe. Anyways, thanks for all of your questions._

_Okay, so let me paint a little picture for you of this universe. So basically, human beings are genetically engineered to look 'good' in certain ways (their genetic code is GEARED so that their eyeballs are tweaked a certain way, their skin is soft, etc.). They're not robots, although they are used like items. They have feelings, usually- because I mean, they're human. The only thing here is that Product 1034959229 (Hotaru) is a bit of an anomaly; she doesn't feel the emotions that many of the Products feel. _

___I'm not sure what you mean by the 'Matched' thing (maybe it's a show... I'll look it up XD). _Yeah, I'm trying a dystopian fic. :D I hope I'm not failing too badly! 

_Last but not least, her number: You're right; she was produced __1034959229th. I think I used that number because a) it was HUGE, so it would exemplify the scope of the company that she was created by, and b) it contains all of my favorite numbers in it ('cause I don't like the numbers 6,7 and 8). :]_


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